The path to consensus – an analysis of Waldron’s critique of Rawls about political disagreement
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-6746.2019.3.29041Keywords:
Ideal and non-ideal theories of justice. Justice as fairness. Political disagreement. Political philosophy.Abstract
Our aim in this paper is to analyze Waldron’s critique of Rawls, made in the book “Law and Disagreement”. We want to know if, implicit in the critique, lies the idea that Rawls was making a bad idealization. To do this, we need first clarify what is an “ideal theory” (as opposed to a non-ideal theory) and what are good or bad idealizations. We’ll develop these distinctions in the first section of the text. Waldron attacks Rawls’s alleged inability to seriously address the problem of disagreements on political principles. Exposing and analyzing the many aspects of this critique will occupy us on the remaining sections of the text. At the end of the analysis, we’ll argue that, although Waldron’s attacks were strong, we nonetheless have no reason to conclude that implicit on them rests the idea that Rawls was making bad idealizations.
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